When Paige Finn Doherty first met Kavitta Ghai, it was under bright lights around a tangle of microphone cords in Miami.
Though Ghai’s startup Nectir was based in Playa Vista, and Doherty’s venture firm Behind Genius Ventures was based in Mid-Wilshire, the pair first crossed paths during “The Pitch,” a TV show that allows founders to pitch to a panel of venture capitalists and a live audience. Doherty was one of the panel members sitting opposite of Ghai.
Ghai broke a record that had never been replicated in the nine years, 11 seasons and 127 episodes of “The Pitch” – she raised $1.4 million in 30 minutes.
“She had this absolutely incredible, positive energy. And then she started to tell me about her business,” Doherty said. “She had such an incredible command over the numbers, the value proposition of what she was building at Nectir. Any questions I asked her, she could get anecdotes from her students she was working with.”
Picking its investments
Behind Genius Ventures looks at about 2,000 investment opportunities a year. In 2024, it invested in seven new founding teams, including Nectir. Most of them are startups in the seed stage or pre-seed stage that revolve around the future of work and the future of human interaction. Since its inception in 2021, Behind Genius Ventures has invested in more than 40 startups, including video editor Capsule and edtech platform Prof Jim.
“The type of founder I love working with most is a technical storyteller,” Doherty said. “Someone who can be really in the weeds of building a business, but also able to zoom out and talk more about the long-term vision of the company.”
“Technical storyteller” is how Doherty would describe Ghai, who struggled through standardized teaching curriculums in part due to her autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and who created Nectir to help other students find non-traditional learning methods.
“I feel like her experiences in a school system and seeing how much the technology she’s built could impact the learning outcomes of others was like a deeply personal mission to solve,” Doherty said.
Getting its start
Doherty is a storyteller herself. She wrote a children’s book that untangled the complex web of industry jargon and money-movers that make up venture capital. She founded Behind Genius Ventures in 2021 after stints at other venture capital enterprises. At the age of 25, she raised her second fund at $8.9 million, allowing her to connect with other young founders (like Ghai, who was 27 when she raised a $4 million seed round in December) in the startup space.
Doherty also vets founders for what she calls “execution velocity” – how fast and how thoughtfully founders are able to execute their plan, take in feedback from investors and the market, and balance the short term goals of the company with longer term aspirations.
“(Nectir is) like head and shoulders above the other entrepreneurs that we’ve met with,” Doherty said.
Behind Genius Ventures participated in Nectir’s $4 million seed round. From there, Doherty implemented her value add as an investor – introducing the startup founders to public relations experts to put the company on the radar, connecting Ghai with other investors who may be interested in working with Nectir, and, of course, being available at 3 a.m.
“I think sometimes it’s easy to forget how much a quick phone call or like a check in can mean those moments,” Doherty said.
